Creativity: A Dangerous Myth

Author(s): Paul Feyerabend

Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Summer, 1987), pp. 700-711
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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Creativity-A Dangerous Myth

Paul Feyerabend

1. Introduction

According to a familiar view a scientist avoids prejudice, collects facts,

and tells it like it is; using the language of mathematics he "imitates"
nature.

This imitative view has a long history and was widely infl
affects the arts as well as the sciences. It was accepted by ancie
and painters, defined Aristotle's account of poetry, and was
Alberti and Leonardo; it inspired the early inventors of pho
and it underlies modern attempts to capture reality in its fullness
stereotypes and simplifications. But it is not without rivals.
According to one of the rivals, "poets do not create from
but on the basis of certain natural talents and guided by divine in
just like seers and the singers of oracles."' There is "a form of
and madness, caused by the muses, that seizes a tender and u
soul and inspires and stimulates it so that it educates by p
deeds of ancestors in songs and in every other mode of poetr
knocks on the door of poetry without the madness of the mu
that technique alone will make him a whole poet does not re
he and his poetry of reason disappear before the poetry of the

Grazia Borrini and W. J. T. Mitchell read an earlier version of this pa

many valuable suggestions. I adopted almost all of them.
1. Plato Apology of Socrates 22c. Translations, unless otherwise noted, ar
2. Plato Phaedrus 245a.

Critical Inquiry 13 (Summer 1987)

? 1987 by The University of Chicago. 0093-1896/87/1304-0002$01.00. All rights reserved.

700

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 Critical Inquiry Summer 1987 701

Even knowledge cannot arise in a purely rational way. In his seventh

letter Plato explains how "from a long and dedicated pursuit of the
subject and from close companionship, [understanding] suddenly, like
fire being kindled by a leaping spark, is born in the soul and straightaway
finds nourishment in itself."3 Thus understanding or building a work of
art contains an element that goes beyond skill, technical knowledge, and
talent. A new force takes hold of the soul and directs it, toward theoretical
insight in one case, toward artistic achievement in the other.
The view adumbrated in these quotations is very popular today.
Interestingly enough it seems to receive support from the most rigorous
and most advanced parts of the sciences. This rigor, it is pointed out, is
but a transitory stage in a process which has much in common with what
Plato envisaged. Of course, it is necessary to make some changes: Plato's
knowledge was stable while scientific knowledge progresses. Plato assumed
that outside forces-madness, divine inspiration-impinge on the soul
while the moderns let the appropriate ideas, images, emotions arise from
the individual soul itself. But there seem to exist many reasons to rec-
ommend a Platonism that has been modified in this way.
In the following essay I shall try to show that the reasons that have
been given are invalid and that the view itself-the view that culture
needs individual creativity-is not only absurd but also dangerous. To
make my criticism as concrete as possible I shall concentrate on a specific
group of arguments in its favor. And to make it as clear as possible I
shall use arguments trying to show the role of individual creativity in
the sciences. If these clear and detailed arguments fail, then the rhetoric
emerging from more foggy areas will altogether lose its force.

2. Einstein's Argument for Creativity Examined

In his essays "On the Method of Theoretical Physics," "Physics and

Reality," and "The Fundaments of Theoretical Physics," Einstein explains
3. Plato Epistles 341c, d.

Paul Feyerabend studied singing and opera production in Vienna,

history of theater and theatrical production at the Institute for the Meth-
odological Reform of the German Theater in Weimar, and physics, as-
tronomy, and philosophy in Vienna. He has lectured on aesthetics, the
history of science, and philosophy in Austria, Germany, England, New
Zealand, and the United States. At the moment he holds ajoint appointment
at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Federal Institute of
Technology in Zurich. His books include Against Method (1975), Erkenntnis
fir freie Menschen (1981), and Philosophical Papers (1981). Forthcoming
works are Farewell to Reason and Stereotypes of Reality.

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702 Paul Feyerabend Creativity--A Dangerous Myth

why scientific theories and concepts are "fictions" or "free creations of

the human mind" and why "only intuition, resting on sympathetic un-
derstanding of experience, can reach them." According to Einstein,

the first step in the setting of a "real external world" is the formation
of the concept of bodily objects and of bodily objects of various
kinds. Out of the multitude of our sense experiences we take,
mentally and arbitrarily, certain repeatedly occurring complexes
of sense impressions (partly in conjunction with sense impressions
which are interpreted as signs for sense experiences of others),
and we correlate to them a concept-the concept of the bodily
object. Considered logically this concept is not identical with the
totality of sense impressions referred to; but it is a free creation of
the human (or animal) mind. On the other hand, this concept
owes its meaning and its justification exclusively to the totality of
the sense impressions which we associate with it.
The second step is to be found in the fact that, in our thinking
(which determines our expectation), we attribute to this concept
of the bodily object a significance, which is to a high degree inde-
pendent of the sense impressions which originally give rise to it.
This is what we mean when we attribute to the bodily object "a
real existence." The justification of such a setting rests exclusively
on the fact that, by means of such concepts and mental relations
between them, we are able to orient ourselves in the labyrinth of
sense impressions. These notions and relations, although free mental
creations, appear to us stronger and more unalterable than the
individual sense experience itself, the character of which as anything
other than the result of an illusion or hallucination is never com-
pletely guaranteed. On the other hand, these concepts and relations,
and indeed the postulation of real objects and, generally speaking,
of the existence of "the real world," have justification only in so
far as they are connected with sense impressions between which
they form a mental connection.4

Next, says Einstein, we introduce theories. Theories are speculative

to an even higher degree. They not only are "not directly connected wit
complexes of sense experiences,"5 they are not even uniquely determined
by observations: two different theories with different basic concepts (suc
as classical mechanics and the general theory of relativity) may fit the
same empirical laws and the same observations,6 and they may even clash
with facts that were known at the time of their invention. The principle
and concepts of theories are therefore entirely "fictitious."7 Yet they ar
supposed to describe a hidden but objective real world. It needs a strong

4. Albert Einstein, "Physics and Reality," Ideas and Opinions (New York, 1954), p. 291
5. Ibid., p. 294.
6. See Einstein, "On the Method of Theoretical Physics," Ideas and Opinions, p. 273.
7. Ibid.

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 Critical Inquiry Summer 1987 703

faith, a deeply religious attitude to believe in such a connection, and

tremendous creative efforts are required to establish it.
This account of the growth of physical knowledge suffers from major
difficulties. For example, the starting point of the process which according
to Einstein leads to reality is utterly unreal. There exists no stage in
history or in the growth of an individual that corresponds to the "first
stage" outlined above; there exists no stage when, surrounded by a "lab-
yrinth of sense impressions," we "mentally and arbitrarily" select special
bundles of experience, "freely create" concepts, and correlate them with
the bundles. Even small children do not perceive bare colors and sounds;
they perceive meaningful structures such as smiles or friendly voices.
The perceptual world of the grown-up, on the other hand, contains a
great variety of things and processes from tables and chairs to operatic
performances, rainbows, and stars. Most of these entities present themselves
as being objective and independent of our wishes: we must push them,
squeeze them, cut them to effect a physical change-a mere change of
attitude or even of physical position does not suffice. Sense impressions
such as pure colors and pure sounds (as opposed to colored things and,
say, human voices) play a negligible role in our perceptual world; they
appear under special conditions that have to be carefully monitored (use
of the reduction screen, for example), which means they are late theoretical
constructs, not the beginnings of knowledge. Besides, it would not help
us if they were: a person put into a "labyrinth of sense impressions"
could not possibly start constructing physical objects; he would be com-
pletely disoriented and unable to think the simplest thought. He would
not be "creative," he would simply be paralyzed.
Let us now assume that the impossible has happened and that,
having been given sense data, we have succeeded in constructing, "mentally
and arbitrarily," a world of real objects. Are the further stages of Einstein's
story correct? They are not!
It is true that a world of real objects is not logically equivalent to a
selection of sense data, however carefully arranged, but it does not follow
that this world has been constituted by a personal act of creation: when
I walk, the step I take now does not follow logically from the step I have
just taken-but it would be silly to say that walking is the result of creative
acts on part of the walker. Or, to take an example from inanimate nature:
a later position of a falling stone does not follow logically from an earlier
position; yet no defender of individual creativity would be inclined to
say that the stone is falling creatively. Piaget has described in great and
fascinating detail how the perceptions of children develop through stages
without any conscious creative efforts on their part, simply following a
"law of evolution."8 Some features of our behavior may even be genetically
determined. (An example is the recognition of patterns and the subsequent

8. Jean Piaget, The Construction of Reality in the Child (New York, 1954), p. 352.

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704 Paul Feyerabend Creativity-A Dangerous Myth

attachment to them, so beautifully described by Konrad Lorenz in his

study of young geese.) Result: the existence of a logical gap taken by
itself does not yet show that it needs an individual creative act to bridge
the gap.
Moving from everyday objects to scientific theories we find the fol-
lowing new features: scientific theories are rarely expressed in everyday
terms. They are formulated mathematically, different theories often using
terms from different mathematical disciplines; the formalisms are con-
nected with concepts and intuitions unfamiliar to common sense; and
the predictions, basic terms, and theories are not uniquely determined
by the known facts. The argument I am examining now concludes that
the invention of the new languages and of the theories associated with
them could not have occurred without considerable creative effort. Is
this conclusion acceptable? I don't think it is; let me again explain my
reasons.

My first reason is that the development of conc

result of the conscious actions of those using the
abstract notions of being, divinity, part and whole
by Xenophanes and Parmenides and elaborated by Ze
by an unplanned gradual erosion of more concrete
began in the Iliad and became noticeable by the sixth
B.C. The philosophers built on the erosion; they did
erosion affected behavioral concepts such as the con
concepts such as the concept of honor, and "epist
such as the concept of knowledge. Originally all th
details of attitude, facial expression, mood, situation
circumstances. For example, there existed a concept
tained the fear felt by the person looking as an ins
and a concept of knowledge that incorporated the be
and propelling the acquisition of knowledge.9 The v
then in existence, their complexity, and their realism
that it might well be impossible to reduce our ways
to a few simple, context- (observer-) independent and
notions. However, the number and the complexity
creased, details disappeared, "words became impo
they became one-sided and empty formulae.""1 Phi
quently prefer simple, clear, and easily definable n
unclear, and undefinable ones thrived on the deterio
to assert, after the event, that there was essentially
knowledge, one concept of divinity, one concept of
9. Details are found in Bruno Snell, Aiisdrucke fiir den Begffdes Wiss
Philosophie (Berlin, 1924), and Die Entdeckung des Geistes: Studien zur E
Denkens bei den Griechen (Gottingen, 1975).
10. Kurt von Fritz, Philosophie und Sprachlicher Ausdruck bei Democ
(Darmstadt, 1966), p. 11.

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 Critical Inquiry Summer 1987 705

and detailed worldview-the worldview implicit in the Homeric epics-

was replaced by a different, simpler, and more abstract worldview-the
worldview of the Presocratics (atomists included) and, then, of Plato-
without much conscious participation on part of those who profited from the
development. (Aristotle later restored important features of earlier thought
and thus achieved an admirable synthesis of common sense and abstract
philosophy.) Of course, there were some minor "discoveries" embedded
here and there in the whole process-but they were of little importance
and would have been useless without support from the major noncreative
changes. Ernst Mach, one of the most imaginative philosophers of science,
describes a similar situation in the history of numbers in the following
way:

One often calls the numbers "free creations of the human mind."
The admiration for the human spirit that is expressed in these
words is quite natural when we view the finished and imposing
edifice of arithmetic. However, our understanding of these creations
is better served by tracing their instinctive beginnings and considering
the circumstances which led to the need for these creations. Perhaps
one will then realize that the first structures [Bildungen] which
arose here were unconsciously and biologically forced upon humans
by material circumstances and that their value could be recognized
only after they had proved useful."1

My second reason for doubting that abstract and unusual concepts

are exclusively the results of individual creative acts is that even the
conscious and intentional formulation of novel general principles can be
explained without resorting to creativity. An example will show what I
mean.

In chapter 1, section 2 of his Mechanik, Mach pre

Stevin's argument for the conditions of static equilib
plane (equal weights on inclined planes of equal he
proportion to the lengths of the planes-this I shall c
To derive E Stevin imagines a chain suspended on a
the two planes. The chain, he argues, will either mo
the first case it must be in perpetual motion, for ev
chain is equivalent to every other position. But a
the chain around the wedge, says Stevin, is absurd (
chain is therefore at rest and in equilibrium. And as
the chain, being symmetrical, can be cut off without
librium, we obtain E. So far Stevin.
According to Mach, a proposition such as E can be
experiments and derivations therefrom, or with the

11. Ernst Mach, Erkenntnis und Irrtum: Skizzen zur Psychologie d

1917), p. 327.

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706 Paul Feyerabend Creativity-A Dangerous Myth

such as P. Experiments, he says, are "distorted by alien circumstances

(friction)," they "always differ" from the "precise static proportions," they
"appear doubtful," and the way from them to general laws is "limping,"
"unclear," and "patchy."12 Induction leads to sorry results. Arguments
from principles, on the other hand, "have greater value" and we "accept
them without contradiction." The authority they possess derives from
an "instinct"-for example, from Stevin's conviction that the chain cannot
possibly be in perpetual motion. This is the driving force of science, for
"only the strongest instinct combined with the strongest conceptual power
can make a person a great scientist" (M, p. 27).
It is interesting to compare Mach's analysis of the use of principles
in the sciences with Einstein's. Einstein read Mach with interest and was
influenced by him in many ways. Following Mach he did not start his
paper on the special theory of relativity in the then usual way, by describing
experimental results; he started with principles such as the principle of
relativity and the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light.
Throughout his life he mocked scientists who concentrated on "measuring
accuracies" and were "deaf to the strongest arguments."'13 Like Mach he
thought certain facts to be too obvious to be in need of experimental
support. For example, it appears that the Michelson-Morley experiment
played no direct role in his construction of the special theory of relativity.
"I guess I just took it for granted that it was true," he replied to R. S.
Shankland who had asked him precisely that question."14 "For it does not
matter," Mach wrote in the case of Stevin, "if one really carries out the
experiment, provided the success is beyond question. Stevin just carries
out a thought experiment." And this, Mach says, "is not a mistake-if
it were a mistake, then all of us would share it" (M, pp. 29, 27).
Mach's use of "instinct" seems to bring us close to Einstein's "free
creations of the human mind"-but the difference is enormous. For
while Einstein offers no analysis of the process of creation, prefer
to connect it with his religious attitude, Mach immediately add
qualification, "This, however, forces us in no way to turn the instin
elements of science into a new mysticism ... Instead of practicing mystic
let us rather ask the following question: how does instinctive knowl
originate and what is contained in it?" (M, p. 27). And he replies
the instinct that makes a researcher formulate general principles wit
a detailed examination of relevant empirical evidence is the result

12. Mach, Die Mechanik in ihrer entwicklung historisch-kritisch dargestellt, 9th ed. (Leip
1933), pp. 28, 82; all further references to this work, abbreviated M, will be includ
the text.
13. Einstein to Max Born, 12 May 1952, The Born-Einstein Letters: Correspondence be
Albert Einstein and Max and Hedwig Born from 1916 to 1955, trans. Irene Born (New
1971), p. 192.
14. R. S. Shankland, "Conversations with Albert Einstein," American Journal of P
31 (1963): 55.

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 Critical Inquiry Summer 1987 707

long process of adaptation to which all of us, scientists as well as non-

scientists, are subjected. Many expectations were disappointed during
this process, behavior changed accordingly, and the human mind now
contains the results of the changes. And as the number of disappointed
expectations we experience in our daily lives, and with it the number of
confirmations for certain impossibilities (such as the impossibility that a
chain may move with perpetual motion), is immeasurably greater than
the number of the consciously planned experiments we can perform as
scientists, it is entirely reasonable to correct and perhaps even to suspend
the results of such experiments with the help of instinctively found prin-
ciples. Of course, Stevin's argument can start only after the two ele-
ments-the problem of the inclined plane and the instinctive knowledge
concerning perpetual motion-have been brought together: Stevin must
"see" that the one can be solved by the other. But as we can read in
many descriptions of scientific discovery, this "bringing together" occurs
almost by itself and is disturbed rather than helped by conscious inter-
vention.15 Thus Mach has provided the elements of an explanatory sketch
where Einstein (and Planck, and others) simply speak of "free creations
of the human mind." The phenomena on which Einstein bases his view,
taken by themselves, are therefore not yet proof of individual acts of
creativity. We must take the analysis a few steps further.

3. The View of Human Beings That Underlies the Idea

of Individual Creativity

I now come to my third and last comment on creativity. Speaking

of creativity makes sense only if we view human beings in a certain way:
they start causal chains, they are not just carried along by them. This, of
course, is what most "educated" people in the West assume today. They
not only make the assumption, they also regard it as obvious. What else
is a human being supposed to be? A human being competes, has re-
sponsibilities, makes decisions, considers problems, tries to solve them,
and acts on the world in accordance with the solutions obtained. From
our very childhood we are trained to connect events with our actions, to
assume responsibility for them, and to blame others for things we do
not like. The assumption is the basis of politics, education, science, and
personal relations. However, it is not the only possible assumption, and
a life that rests on it is not the only form of life that ever existed. Human
beings had (and in cultures different from ours still have) very different
ideas about themselves, their lives, their role in the universe, they acted

15. For examples, see Jacques Salomon Hadamard, An Essay on the Psychology of Invention
in the Mathematical Field (Princeton, N.J., 1945).

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708 Paul Feyerabend Creativity-A Dangerous Myth

in accordance with these ideas, and they achieved results we still admire
and try to imitate.
As an example take again the Homeric epics. A Homeric hero may
find himself faced by various alternatives. Thus Achilles says,

For my mother Thetis the goddess of the silver feet tells me

I carry two sorts of destiny towards the day of my death. Either,
if I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans,
my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting;
but if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers,
the excellence of my glory is gone, but there will be a long life.'6

Bruno Snell has pointed out that passages such as these cannot be in-
terpreted as saying that Achilles will choose the one path or the other;
we must rather say that he eventually finds himself on one of the two paths,
and, having been given its description in advance, he now knows what
he can expect: "In Homer we never find a personal decision, a conscious
choice made by an acting human being-a human being who is faced
with various possibilities never thinks: it now depends on me, it depends
on what I decide to do."'7 And it could not be otherwise. Human beings,
in Homer, simply do not have the unity needed for conscious choices
and creative acts. Humans, as they appear in late geometric art, in Homer,
and in popular thought, are systems of loosely connected parts; they
function as transit stations for equally loosely connected events such as
dreams, thoughts, emotions, divine interventions. There is no spiritual
center, no "soul" that might initiate or "create" special causal chains, and
even the body does not possess the coherence and the marvelous articulation
given it in late Greek sculpture. But this lack of integration of the individual
is more than compensated by the way in which the individual is embedded
into its surroundings. While the modern conception separates the human
being from the world in a manner that turns interactions into unsolvable
problems (such as the mind-body problem), a Homeric warrior or poet
is not a stranger in the world but shares many elements with it. He may
not "act" or "create" in the sense of the defenders of individual respon-
sibility, free will, and creativity-but he does not need such miracles to
partake in the changes that surround him.'8
With this I come to the main point of my argument. Today personal
creativity is regarded as a special gift whose growth must be encouraged
and whose absence reveals serious shortcomings. Such an attitude makes
sense only if human beings are self-contained entities, separated from

16. Homer Iliad (Chicago, trans. Richard Lattimore), 11.

17. Snell, Gesammelte Schriften (Gottingen, 1966), p. 18.
18. For details, see my Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge
(London, 1975).

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 Critical Inquiry Summer 1987 709

the rest of nature, with ideas and a will of their own. But this view has
led to tremendous problems. There are theoretical problems (the mind-
body problem and, on a more technical level, the problem of induction,
the problem of the reality of the external world, the problem of mea-
surement in quantum mechanics, and so on), practical problems (how
can the actions of humans who viewed themselves as the masters of
nature and society and whose achievements now threaten to destroy
be reintegrated with the rest of the world?), ethical problems (have h
beings the right to shape nature and cultures different from their
according to their latest intellectual fashions?).19 All these problem
closely connected with the transition, already described, from com
and concrete to simple and abstract concepts. For while the earlier con
took dependencies for granted and expressed them in various ways
concepts of the "philosophers" (as the first theoretical scientists ca
themselves) and their seventeenth-century refinements were "object
that is, detached from those who produced them and from the situa
in which they were produced and therefore in principle incapab
doing justice to the rich pattern of interactions that is the world. It
a miracle to bridge the abyss between subject and object, man and na
experience and reality that is the result of these conceptual "re
tions"-and creativity leading to wonderful castles of (philosophical
or scientific) thought is supposed to be that miracle. Thus the alleg
most rational view of the world yet in existence can function only w
combined with the most irrational events there are, namely miracl

4. Return to Wholeness

But there is no need for miracles. As I tried to show in my analysis

of Einstein's argument, Einstein uses creativity for producing results
(objects external to the observer; concepts more abstract than the com-
monsense concepts of a certain period) that are either transitory stages
of a natural development (in the individual, in groups) or minute mod-
ifications of such stages. Neglecting the development and those features

19. More recent studies of what is called, somewhat euphemistically, "developmental

aid" have revealed the material and spiritual damage caused by Western interventions.
The expansion of Western civilization robbed indigenous peoples of their dignity and their
means of survival. War, slavery, simple murder seemed to be the right ways of dealing
with "primitives." But the humanitarians did not fare better than the gangsters. Imposing
their own views of what it means to be human and how scarcity can be avoided, they often
added to the destruction wrought by their predecessors. A detailed account with ample
literature in the case of hunger is Grazia Borrini, "Le Cause della Fame," Scienza Esperienza
(Sept. 1985); the revised and expanded English version, "Health and Development: A
Marriage of Heaven and Hell?" appears in Studies in Third World Societies, ed. Antonio
Ugalda (Austin, Tex., 1987). For a general critique, see John H. Bodley, Victims of Progress
(Menlo Park, Calif., 1982).

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710 Paul Feyerabend Creativity-A Dangerous Myth

of a human being (of a group) that make it possible Einstein starts from
an abstract entity, the thinking subject, in fictitious surroundings, the
"labyrinth of [his] sensations." Naturally he needs an equally abstract
and fictitious process, creativity, to reestablish contact with real human
beings and the results of their work. The gap that needs the miracle
occurs in his model, it does not occur in the real world as described by
researchers of a less abstract bent of mind (old-fashioned biologists, non-
behavioral psychologists) and by common sense. Replace the model with
this world and the specter of individual creativity will disappear like a
bad dream. Unfortunately, this is not yet the end of the matter.
The reason is that fictitious theories while out of touch with nature
need not be out of touch with behavior and thus with culture. On the
contrary, they often provide motives for strange and destructive action
Unrealistic policies do not just collapse; they affect the world, they le
to wars and other social and natural disasters. Once enthroned the
cannot be easily dislocated by argument. Argument starts from certa
assumptions, proceeds in a certain way, and has strength only if it mov
in an acceptable direction. Put into a hostile environment the most beautiful
argument sounds like sophistry-this is true of science, this is even mor
true of politics and of the common sense that supports it in democra
countries. We do need arguments-but we also need an attitude, a religio
a philosophy, or whatever you want to call such an agency with corre
sponding sciences and political institutions that views humans as inseparable
parts of nature and society, not as their independent architects. We d
not need new creative acts to find such a philosophy and the soci
structures it demands. The philosophy (religion) and the social structur
already exist, at least in our history books, for they arose, long ago, wh
ideas and actions were still the results of a natural growth rather tha
of constructive efforts directed against the tendencies of such a growt
There are the Homeric epics, there is Taoism, there are the many "prim
itive" cultures which put us to shame by their cheerful respect for th
wonders of creation. We can learn a lot from the myths and rituals b
means of which "primitive" communities tried to achieve a peacef
coexistence with nature. We cannot reject their views by claiming tha
they clash with "science" or with "the modern situation." There is
monolithic entity, "science," that can be said to clash with things, and
"the modern situation" is a catastrophe that offends our most basic desir
for peace and happiness. Scientists themselves have started criticizing
the separatist view of human beings, the view, that is, that there exi
an "objective" world and a "subjective realm" and that it is imperative
to keep them apart. Thus Mach pointed out, more than a century ago,
that the separation cannot be justified by research, that the simpl
sensation is a far-reaching abstraction and that any act of perceiving
inextricably tied to physiological processes. Lorenz has argued for a scien
that makes "subjective" factors parts of research while one of the mo

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 Critical Inquiry Summer 1987 711

advanced scientific disciplines, elementary particle physics, has forced us

to admit that it is impossible to draw a sharp boundary between nature
and the agencies (mind included) used to examine it.20 Considering the
social aspects we need only remember the attitude of fifteenth-century
Renaissance artists: they worked in teams, they were paid craftsmen, they
accepted the guidance of their lay employers. Teamwork already plays
an important role in the sciences; it was and still is exemplary in institutions
such as the Bell Laboratories leading to inventions (such as the transistor)
which may well help us in our quest for a better world. All that is needed
to restore the efficiency, the modesty and, above all, the humanity of the
practitioners of a craft is the admission that scientists are citizens even
inside the domain of their expertise and should therefore be prepared to
accept the guidance and supervision of their fellow citizens. The conceited
view that some human beings, having the divine gift of creativity, can
rebuild creation to fit their fantasies without consulting nature and without
asking the rest of us, has not only led to tremendous social, ecological,
and personal problems, it also has very doubtful credentials, scientifically
speaking. We should reexamine it, making full use of the less belligerent
forms of life it displaced.

20. For a summary of the technical and philosophical aspects, see David Bohm's
magnificent Wholeness and Implicate Order (London, 1980).

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